Touchstone's Editors and Allies on News and Events of the Day

January 25, 2006

Google Serves the Chinese State

Google has just announced that — in contradiction to the chipper declarations in its famous “Ten Things Google has Found to be True” — it is giving in to the Chinese government and censoring what its Chinese users may find through it. If it didn't help the Chinese government oppress its people, it wouldn't make much money in China.

Tomorrow's Daily Telegraph includes an article trying, as far as I can tell, to reduce Google's culpability by arguing that the Chinese government's attempt to control the internet won't work. I hope the writer of The Great Firewall of China Will Fall is right, but Google is nevertheless serving a brutal government and helping it oppress its people, even if its service will prove only partially effective.

According to the article, the company's heads say

with some justification, that their three-point plan — to show on the site where censorship has occurred; to restrict services so that no lists of names will be handed over to Beijing; and to maintain a Chinese-language site beyond the firewall — is a subtle response to an ethical dilemma. But these fine words cannot hide financial motives. Two years ago, Google's market share in the Middle Kingdom was 50 per cent. Today it is just 20 per cent. And with user surveys showing that the Google users are predominantly old and English-speaking, the writing is on the wall.

There is no ethical dilemma, because they do not have to do business in China at all. The company is not forced to choose between two goods, so that to do one good means the loss of the other, a dilemma that might justify a compromise. The Chinese people will not be deprived of search engines did Google refuse nor greatly aided by its acceptance. The "subtle response" is better understood as an appeasing of conscience, a few concessions that do not change the substance, or the profit, of the decision.

In this Google is following Microsoft and, most appallingly, Yahoo:

In December 2005, Microsoft controversially closed down the political blogger Michael Anti's site, following a request from the authorities. Yahoo went even further and provided information that helped to jail a dissident for 10 years, after he used a Yahoo e-mail to relay the contents of a secret government order.

3 Comments

Mr. Mills - It's not quite accurate to say that Google is following the example of Microsoft or Yahoo. As CNN reports in this article:

Neither Google's e-mail nor blogging services will be offered in China because the company doesn't want to risk being ordered by the government to turn over anyone's personal information. The e-mail service, called Gmail, creates a huge database of users' messages and makes them instantly searchable. The blogging services contain a wide range of personal background.

Yahoo came under fire last year after it provided the government with the e-mail account information of a Chinese journalist who was later convicted for violating state secrecy laws.

Initially, Google's Chinese service will be limited to searching Web pages and images. The company also will provide local search results and a special edition of its news service that will be confined to government-sanctioned media.

Perhaps someone can slip Larry Page or Sergey Brin a copy of Mao: The Untold Story by Jung Chang, just so they know who they are doing business with, not that I would expect it to change their decision.

"Initially, Google's Chinese service will be limited to searching Web pages and images." This is incomplete description. It should read, "Google's Chinese service will be limited to searching Web pages and images of which the Chinese Communist government approves. Web pages and images the Chinese Communist government disapproves of will be gladly blocked by Google so Mr. Brin and Mr. Page and stockholders in their corporation can increase profits."

No doubt CNN would have written this kind of description if Google was connected to the Bush family and the government in question was fascist.